Satellite tracking collars allow for critical information on elephant movement, migration, and habitat use to be collected. This enables researchers and reserve management to gain knowledge into how elephants utilize the landscape and provide insight into how they can better preserve the ecosystem around its largest inhabitants’ use. Furthermore, data collected on the immigration, recruitment, and redistribution of large herbivores, in particular elephants, is critical to landscape restoration projects such as Karingani.
In early 2020, two elephants, a bull and a cow were chosen from a predetermined section of Karingani Game Reserve. While the valuable data from the two collared elephants provides significant insight into elephant movements within the south and eastern sectors of Karingani, the sheer size of the 145,000 ha reserve allows for it to be home to many unique breeding herds of elephants and roaming bachelors. Collaring more elephants from other sections in the reserve will further add to this critical data collection and awareness of elephant movement patterns over the ever-changing seasons at Karingani.
We seek to collect spatial movement, habitat usage data, and seasonal migrations on at least 10 more elephants for a minimal duration of two years at Karingani Game Reserve through the use of satellite tracking collars. The aim is to collect information on an additional five breeding herds through collaring five individual elephant cows from five different matriarchal herds. Moreover, to gain further understanding of the large-scale movements of the solitary bulls, an additional five bulls selected from different areas within Karingani will also be chosen to receive tracking collars.
